many folks are talking about the fiscal cliff and if we can't have dialogue and decision making in the u.s. senate, then our government is unable to respond to the big issues that we face. and i can tell you my perspective comes from having gone first to the u.s. senate when i was 19. it was 1976 and i covered the tax act of that year and i saw amendment after amendment, brought up, debated, decided. that's the way the senate generally work. the senate is completely different today. it's paralyzed and broken in a way no one could have envisioned a couple of decades ago. >> i want to show some data on that point. culture motions have skyrocketed. percent of judicial nominees confirmed by the president for barack obama is 42.8%. you see there in the 90s and 80s and then they go down dramatically. and to give you a sense of how things have changed historically, this is an important historical document. we all know when we cover politics, they're counting votes. they only have 58 votes in the senate. not going to happen. this is from 1964 and this is a note from president lyndon johnson's